Man Finds Used Condom In Southwestern Whopper, Sues Burger King

By consumeristcareyDecember 9, 2007

Van Miguel Hartless is suing the owner of a Rutland Burger King after biting into a Southwestern Whopper that contained a used condom. When Hartless complained to the manager, he “laughed off the incident.”

Hartless said during an interview Thursday that the second and last time he visited the Burger King in Rutland was on June 18 when the lure of a home-style hamburger brought him to the restaurant.

“At that time they were promoting the Southwestern Whopper. Being from Texas I was excited. There’s not a lot of spicy food here,” he said.

Hartless, who moved to Fair Haven two years ago, said he didn’t recognize anyone working at the restaurant and as far as he knows, no one in the restaurant knew him.

But while he was ordering his meal, he said the woman taking his order gave him a hard time about doing the order his way.

“I asked for a Whopper with jalapenos and hold the onions,” he said. “The girl told me they didn’t have jalapenos but the last time I was in there they gave me jalapenos. When I said that, she told me that they never carried jalapenos. I told her that was fine, but she pulled out a list and said, ‘Like you see, we don’t carry them.’

“When she read back my order a few minutes later it was wrong,” he added.

Frustrated, Hartless said he sat in a booth to wait for his meal. From the angle of the booth, he said he couldn’t see the kitchen or the person preparing his sandwich.

When his order was ready, he said he took it home with him to Fair Haven where he sat down to dinner with his spouse and stepdaughter. He said after making his gruesome discovery, the rest of the sandwiches were searched but no additional objects were found.

Hartless was rightly incensed by the manager’s crass reaction: “That’s the part that upsets me the most, is that he laughed about it.” Burger King’s official reaction was similarly insensitive. They sent an apology less than a week after the incident that concluded: “Hope you come back and have more pleasurable experience.”

The urge to think “Attention Whore! Frivolous Lawsuit!” is mitigated because Hartless submitted to a polygraph test and seems genuinely troubled. The poor guy was plagued by nightmares, the kind you do not have unless you suffer from post-traumatic stress syndrome:

“I know it sounds kind of funny now but I had dreams where I would be doing random things and whatever I was holding would turn into the hamburger or the condom.”

This is one of those cases in which I hope the guy wins and manages to put a severe dent (if not obliterate) the store in question.

Having an employee that does this is bad enough. Laughing about it is another matter entirely. Sidestepping the issue and just saying “Sorry, come back and try again!” is just kicking them when they’re down.

The link says that they’re not sure if the condom was used or not…Did he not keep the burger and have it scanned for semen? But anyway, why is this guy having to sue?!? This should be being investigated by the police! This man could have gotten any sort of STD. Whatever happened to just spitting in someone’s food… I’m ashamed to be from Vermont right now >_<

This is very troublesome. This man should start litigation againest BK or at the least the Store in question including the employees. Not to mention that the police need to investigate this. Is there a law about biological harm? That is what it sounds like to me. Assualting a person with biohazard!

Hate to be the cad, but it was mitigated because he submitted to a non-court admissible polygraph test, and “seemed” troubled? Not that he did not place it there himself, but seemed troubled. And luckily, the subjective test was performed by a person paid by his lawyer.

Also, rather than going to the burger king in Fair Haven, where he lived, he went 20 miles away to a completely different Burger King, and went inside to order his meal, and seemed to make himself memorable by requesting something and then arguing about it. Some possible red flags there, as if I am bringing home food, I usually choose the closest restaurant to my destination.

As for the nightmares, it’s almost like whiplash. It can’t be proven, but it might be there. I just think this is hinky.

how do we know this dude’s not faking it. Remember the syringe BS in cans of pepsi? Somehow people were claiming it in record numbers after the fact in the hopes of cashing in. One lady was caught on tape slipping one in at Walmart and trying to cash in.

@GitEmSteveDave:
Yeah, I tend to agree. The whole thing seems awfully fishy. The simply fact that he’s never initiated frivolous/false litigation in the past doesn’t prove that this is legit. While the odd facts (such as being in a different town) can easily be accounted for, I’d like to see if they actually are accounted for. Further, I’m not sure he has an “open and shut” case for negligence. With negligence, you have to prove actual harm. He’s going to have to get expert witnesses to testify that he is indeed suffering some sort of mental harm/injury. I’m not saying the guy is a liar, but I do think the story has some holes. If he’s lucky, Burger King will offer a nice settlement rather and he’ll take it rather than risking a trial.

Worse yet is the dingbat who thinks that he could put a condom in someone’s burger and have them NOT NOTICE IT. For god’s sake, spit is gross enough, and you could probably get away with it. But a condom???

Five years ago, a family friend of ours ate a burger from Burger King that the employees messed with because he was a cop. They sprinkled some weird drug over it that he was allergic too. It made him deathly ill for over a year, and he was fully supported by his wife, which put themin a lot of debt because they had just had a kid too.

They sued the pants off of Burger King, got the store shut down and the teens were sent to jail for a long time.

I have no sympathy for pricks that do this kind of stuff to customers. It can RUIN they’re lives.

Thankfully, our friend is alright now and back working but for a while no one was sure how he could survive.

Since the finger incident I am doubtful of strange things in products. If it really happened I hope he gets a bunch of money so as to prevent this from happening in the future. If this is some type of scam then I hope he pays dearly for it.

@He: Polygraphs have plenty of basis in fact. Its how non-technical people take the polygraphs readings to mean that mess it up. Polygraphs do not tell you if a person is lying or telling the truth, it tells you that a person is reacting a certain way which is a plausible sign of truth or falsehood.

And the reason they are not accepted in court (which is not true everywhere) is because even though they are capable of showing that most people are “lying or telling the truth” is the ease to bypass it in a controlled environment.

@sleze69: Free speech hasn’t been treating me so well, since the US PATRIOT act I haven’t really been able to say how much this country has gone to crap without worrying about the FBI knocking down my door or being put on a list.

@Pylon83: for negligence, you have to prove injury. However, in addition to the possible psychological effects, this seems to involve actual malice, which I think changes the nature of the tort somewhat.

Just like any other big-co, major restaurant chains have just about quit caring completely when it comes to customers now that so many have become dependent on them because of today’s hectic lifestyles. It doesn’t surprise me that the employee laughed.

Take those little “Contact Us” boxes on their web sites. Completely useless. I’ve used them three times in the past year (Subway, McDonalds, and Pizza Hut) and received no response whatsoever from any of them. I imagine they just hit the delete button daily to get rid of the nuisance.

I guess they are there for customers to let off steam and hopefully get over it which most of the time they will instead of writing snail mail or trying to contact someone personally.

I am guessing that the Condom was outside a package (still disgusting) but not “used to its fullness”. In the 3 minutes it takes to make the sandwich, I doubt somebody could have snuck to the storeroom (yuck) with a coworker and “prepared it”.

Unless kids these days carry them around as a memorabilia, or something :)

@He: Right you are, man! Right you are! They might have well killed a chicken and checked out its guts. Or better, have John Edwards ask some ghosts what really happened. Polygraph tests are complete and utter nonsense, end of story.

Does used condom mean “condom containing semen” or does it mean “condom out of the wrapper.” I wonder if folks in a kitchen keep used condoms lying around, or if one was specially made for his burger in the bathroom. Or if somebody opened a new condom, filled it with mayonase, and put that on there. I guess my question is “would you like come with your buger?”

To be fair to the manager, that shit is funny. It’s funny, because it’s so messed up. I would’ve laughed. In fact, I laughed when I read the headline in my reader. Maybe the manager is just one of those nervous laughers. And let’s not forget it’s Vermont, so maybe he was stoned… Anyway, I agree that if they offer a settlement, this kid should take it.@3drage: Please…

i was just thinking…. if you wanted to be REALLY clever about hiding something disgusting in someone’s burger. Take one of those premade/preformed burger patties & Insert whatever (condom, mouse head, band-aid) inside the patty & reform it. Keep it on hand for rude customers. When its discovered… could be blamed on the factory who made it. Putting something on top of an already cooked burger is just going to get you fired.

Heck! I am suprised kids dont keep a spoiled meat patty in some dark corner of the fridge/meat locker to use against rude customers!

I once put pepper spray & tobasco sauce inside beer bottles of a coworker who drank on the job (while the boss looked the other way, but I’d be fired for doing the same). Wasnt hard…. just have to crimp the bottlecaps back on really well.

@GitEmSteveDave: You don’t know a whole lot about Vermont, do you? If you want to go somewhere, you have to drive there. If it’s 20 miles, you do so. More than likely, he lives in Fair Haven, which has a tiny population, and nothing else aside from a McDonalds. He also probably works in Rutland, which aside from Burlington, is about as “urban” as Vermont gets. Rutland is probably the only place in southern Vermont with a good number of jobs, along with White River Junction.

What I’m trying to say is, you’re being ignorant. Ths could all very well be the case, in a state like Vermont, where you everything is in the middle of the woods. Not being crass… I’ve lived in Vermont for 16 years.

@uricmu: What I was thinking was that, to mess with someone’s mind, I’d mix up maybe some mayo and some relish liquid and put that inside the wrapperless condom. Real/gross looking, but unused and therefore no DNA to link.

@camille_javal:
I agree. The only reason I addressed the negligence claim was because that is what the story indicated they were suing under. I think this would fall into an intentional tort because of the malice, rather than negligence. Maybe intentional infliction of emotional distress. I’m not sure what other possibilities they might have without knowing all of the facts, but I simply don’t think it fits well into negligence.

Assuming this is on the up and up, I have a hard time believing the manager had the balls to laugh. With places getting shot up here lately, I think I would be more cautious how I pissed off someone by laughing at them.

I won’t be surprised for a minute that this was a fully used condom. This about it, with movies like JackAss, video games like Vice Squad and the crap they watch on TV, teens are more brazen than ever before. Add to that the entitlement mentality Americans now have and you have a recipe for disaster.
When I was a teen, we thought up some bad stuff, but today makes my generation look like angels. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think all teens are bad, but the bad ones are much worse today than ever before. And people like moron that was peeing into his bosses’ coffee don’t help matters any.
I hope if this case is on the up and up, the guy gets a ton.

As a shareholder of BKC I can tell you I don’t believe him one bit. We’ve been fooled by the old fake used condom in the sandwich routine before. Next you’ll tell me there was a creamy white substance in it.

No, seriously. That is nasty. I got the McDonalds ‘2for2′ Big Macs once, and was chewing a bite of one when I felt a hair in my mouth. I reached in, and pulled out this long brown hair, and I could feel it slithering out of my throat.

Incredibly, the manager did not want to refund my money for the second one because I did not open it so ‘how did I know whether it was bad or not ?’

Burger King finally puts something healthy in a burger and all the customer can do is complain… Seriously, does anyone think a little cum is worse for someone’s health than a fast food hamburger?

(The manager’s reaction sucks, i can understand the customer being pissed. But nightmares? Imagine someone calling you up and completely seriously telling you he’s having nightmares about a condom in his hamburger. You’d laugh too.)

@loueloui: …So if you were a shareholder of McDonald’s, you would have taken that non-existent hair out of your lying mouth’s sensory nerves, then meekly shrugged when the 19-yo fast-food manager told you that “how would you know if it was bad or not?”

Another reason to never eat at BK or MCD’s ever again. I am 6months+ sober(from those two places) and proud of it. I used to eat them both all of the time. Now I cannot believe I used to do that. Ick. Its not just horrible that the food is VERY unhealthy, the workforce that mans these businesses typically isn’t a group of people I would trust (angstridden highschoolers, dropouts, etc. – i know, its a stereotype, and its not true everywhere, but it is a general rule lol).

I think time will tell whether he’s telling the truth. The Wendy’s finger in the chili was proven false but it hurt Wendy’s cause the media all jumped on it.

As for polygraphs, I kinda know how to beat one–though never tried but was told by an expert in the field how best to beat the machine. Also, polygraphs are suspicious when paid for by the attorney.

I remember hearing about another condom in fast food story but I think that one was false.

And finally, I’d like to know this guy’s financial situation. Is he in a lot of debt where he is more likely to need commit and maybe commit fraud? Or is he in a good financial situation, good job and little to no debt–makes me less likely to believe he’d pull such a stunt.

I understand that this would take a reform of the legal system, which isnt likely, but in any event…

With all of the hands that the burger goes through until it goes from the freezer at the store and then cooked and then served… wouldnt it be more appropriate to sue the actual location that the incident occured in (unless this hapened to be a corporate owned location, though I dont think many are)? It isnt like there is a BK corporate policy requiring condoms be placed in whoppers? This is an incident that is local, and probably was done by one or two (nasty) people working at that branch. I dont see why BK as a whole should be sued for something happening locally. The lawsuit should be against the branch, and if the branch is able to figure out the culprits, sue them instead or as well. You would have to feel for a franchise owner who is watching his entire livelihood being taken down by a couple of 16 year old douchbags with nothing to loose and no real sense of accountability.

In a hit and run, you dont sue the company that manufactured the car, or the dealership who sold the car. You sue the driver a.k.a the person responsible for the action that took place.

But in any case, the condom was probably the most nutritious thing in the whole “burger” (I dont think fast food deserves to be called an actual burger). :)